I am now a Senior Member pilot and squadron SE for ABQ Senior Squadron II. I used to be the lead CAP-USAF reservist for the New Mexico Wing under the Southwest Liaison Region. Essentially, this was myself and another reservist in the wing as CAP-USAF reserve assistance program officers (RAPOS). I did this from October 2012 to March of 2015. In that time, I participated in four operations evals, several unit staff visits and obviously several unit climate inspections. I thought I would answer any questions being that I was on the other side so to speak. Also I will provide some insight on Op Evals.During the Ops Evals I was an evaluator for Idaho, Montana and the White Cell for New Mexico and Louisiana. I canít speak for all the Region Liaison CCís, DOís, ADOís, or any of the other reserve support staff. I can say big picture what we used to see as a trend on what would eliminate a wing from an outstanding, is communications and loss of situational awareness.

One of the trends I noticed were that wings would get caught up in the minutia and become myopic and lose the big picture. There seemed to be a conception out there that we were trying to find the smallest thing to ding the IC and staff on. Which was never the case in any of the evals I was on. We expected wings to follow procedures that were outlined in the O-plans. We would sometimes see a departure from this. Big thing we expected the AOBD to know where all their aircraft were and the same for the GOBD and the ground teams. We expected to see the IC and OSC and other staff adapt to a changing situation.

We wanted to see is that the EOC and the mission were being conducted expeditiously, but safe. We were grading that the IC staff had complete control of the mission. We expected the ICís to adapt to a degraded environment. This was either the IC being pulled off, or we magically kill the power to the EOC. Every Op eval you are going to probably lose electronic systems. Also, chances are that any airplane that has a CAP-USAF evaluator on it, is probably going to land somewhere and purposely be taken off the grid. We usually gave an EP scenario to see if the pilot and MO worked to solve it. Usually I gave Low Oil pressure or an Alternator Failure.

Things you donít want to ever do is argue with the evaluator team. If they give you suggestions, they are probably throwing you a bone. Also, donít threaten eval team that if a real world happens they are kicked out of the EOC. That happened during a pre-eval communications. One IC decided to puff his chest and let everyone know who is in charge. Know that the CAP-USAF commander can relieve you of your position. Its fair game for the CAP-USAF team to evaluate a real world situation in lieu of a scenario inject. But if your real world is to go and take a picture of something, that does not mean they are going to stop throwing injects. They may choose to remove one, itís the eval team leaders call.

The more injects the white cell throws, probably means you are doing a good job and we wanted to see if you can perform at your max capacity. If we are withholding injects, that probably means that we see a dysfunctional or struggling EOC and we are trying to our best to make sure you pass. I have seen both ends of the spectrum. One wing received an outstanding and another barely passed.

Also, donít threaten eval team that if a real world happens they are kicked out of the EOC

hahaha......... that's kind of funny (and not funny at the same time): apparently "oversight" only happens after the fact or in training?

mk

It was bizarre when it happened. Our ADO, fka the State Director was not too pleased. This ADO was a no nonsense post Vietnam era Fighter guy who did not take any BS. Needless to say this IC running the mission was the aforementioned one that barely passed. Not because of this either. They could barely handle half of our scenario. Their cadets running the comm stack had more SA than the top three. We really had to throw this wing a bone to pass them.

One of things that we did was stay back and just observed. Some positions require us to ask questions. I can tell without even talking to the AOBD to see if they have SA on where their aircraft are and if they are able to efficiently run the air ops.